


A taste of home

by NightsMistress, SaltyKumquats



Category: Atelier Escha and Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Game, post-true end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 11:31:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7756096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltyKumquats/pseuds/SaltyKumquats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logy made a promise that he would return to Colseit once he had learned everything he could from Central City. However, Logy hasn't answered any of Escha's letters. There is only one solution: taking matters into her own hands and checking on him in person.</p>
<p>Along the way Escha learns that Logy is not the only person who needs a friend, and that Central seems to train its alchemists to be too afraid to reach out to others. Escha is determined to change this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A taste of home

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to TLVop and Morbane for the betas!
> 
> This story has art, thanks to the very talented SaltyKumquats, who I shamelessly lured into my white unmarked shipper van several months ago. You can see it [here](http://paperbarkscrolls.tumblr.com/post/148870241789), and it is also embedded in this story.

From the vantage point of a passenger airship, Central City was small enough that Escha could hide it from view with her interlinked hands. As the airship descended toward Central’s depot, Escha had to recalibrate her perception of how large it was. She had explored larger ruins, but those were from a civilisation long gone. Central City, on the other hand, was full of people just like her, and that made it seem all the stranger to her. 

It was a good thing that she was a passenger rather than the pilot, she thought, as she could spend as much time as she liked drinking the sight of Central. There were so many buildings, and they were so tall! Escha was used to the depot being the largest building in Colseit by a significant margin. In Central, while the depot was the tallest building, there were plenty of buildings that were at least as tall as the local government branch at Colseit. Most were made of the soft sandstone that seemed to be everywhere here, but she could see some made with the hard, grey stone of the forbidding cliffs that the airship had sailed over two day past, and some were made of brick and wood. Those, Escha smiled to see, because they looked like the houses back home. For all that Central was big and new and exciting, some people were still building their homes with clay and wood.

By the time the airship had moored at the depot, Escha had managed to tear herself away from the view. She had things to do, represented by the suitcase resting at her feet and the neat leather satchel resting on top. Escha wanted to check the contents of the satchel one last time to be certain that the valuable letters and reports were still inside, but she had already done that several times that day. Instead, she slung it around her shoulder and adjusted the strap, more out of nerves than anything else. She grunted as she picked up the suitcase, making a face at how heavy it was, and then made her way to the walkway, where she was met by two of the airship’s crew.

“You take care now, Miss,” the pilot, Leonid said, nodding as she stepped onto the walkway connecting the airship deck with the depot. “Central’s a big place, especially if you’ve never been before.”

“Don’t worry, Mister Leonid,” Escha said. She smiled sunnily. “I’ll be sure to go right away to see my friend.”

“If you run into any trouble, give me or one of the boys a yell,” the copilot, Thomas, added “We’ll sort it out.”

“Thank you! I’ll definitely do that,” Escha promised. She beamed at the two of them and waved goodbye with her free hand, before stepping onto the depot platform. The stairs spiralling down the length of the depot tower to the ground below were daunting. Escha was used to running up and down the stairs at Colseit to see Awin, but three weeks of travel had ruined her endurance. If it wasn’t for the thought of seeing Central City close up, Escha might have thought about giving up then and there. 

That, and seeing Logy again. She supposed that she should be annoyed that she had to travel to Central in order to speak with him, given that he hadn’t responded to her letters in the time he’d been away. However, she’d known Logy long enough to know that he wasn’t intentionally ignoring her letters. Logy spent far too much time wrapped up inside his own thoughts, and sometimes forgot that there were was a whole world outside the landscape of his own mind. Over the last few years, Escha learned that the best thing to do when dealing with Logy was to take charge of the situation herself. She seized her opportunity when Marion suggested that Escha go to Central with the term’s reports and budgets. She could see Central City while also reminding Logy that he shouldn’t keep letter writers waiting.

The depot was set at the top of a hill, with the rest of Central sprawling down the slope and into the valley below. Once she was safely on the ground, Escha put her travelling case down and scanned the horizon for Central Command. She had found it while the airship was docking, but she wanted to be sure. She found it finally: a tall building with three other, smaller, buildings positioned closely behind it. Those would have to be the alchemy department that Logy was at, as well as the school and the dining hall that Marion had told her about. They were made of sandstone, like a number of other buildings, judging by the way they reflected the light, and Escha wondered whether there was a sandstone quarry nearby. It would make sense.

She wondered what she could use sandstone for in alchemy. Perhaps Logy would know. He was from here, after all.

Making a note to ask Logy about that later, Escha reached into the leather satchel and pulled out the sheet of paper with Marion’s directions on it. Escha had folded and unfolded it many times on her trip from Colseit to Central, the once-neat fold lines now soft and fuzzy. Escha ran her finger across the lines as she read the instructions one last time. 

“Turn left at the bottom of the hill, then left again at the street market … and then straight ahead until you see the building,” Escha read aloud before folding the sheet of paper again and tucking it back into the satchel. She picked up her travelling case, adjusted her grip on its handle, and then made her way down the hill and to the left towards the market.

Marion had told Escha about Central City’s street market. She had said that it was much larger and busier than anything Colseit had to offer. Escha had dutifully agreed to be careful, but hadn’t comprehended the scope of the market until now.

She stopped and stared down the hill into the market. Battered wooden trailers with traces to hitch them to horses or cows sat next to permanent wooden stalls with coloured fabric streamers rippling and spinning in the breeze. There looked to be at least a hundred people in the market, all packed into one long, narrow street. When Marion had described the market to her, Escha had imagined it to be a claustrophobic, unhappy experience, with everyone too close together to breathe let alone move. 

Instead, she saw a complex dance of people, thrumming with energy and excitement, and constantly in motion. It reminded her a little of alchemy; everything appeared to be chaotic and unpredictable, but there was a kind of intuitive sense to it that she thought if she studied it long enough she’d come to understand herself. She could hear the excited chatter of buyers finding unexpected bargains, the calls of the sellers trying to entice patrons to their stores, and even the sound of a few musicians. It was more like a party than a market.

The wind shifted, wafting the smells of freshly baked pastries up the hill and Escha’s resolve to go straight to Central Command wavered. It had been a long journey, the market looked exciting, and the baking smelled _so_ good …

She shook her head firmly. She had a job to do, and she didn’t want to disappoint everyone by getting so distracted by new sights that she lost the letters or worse, Solle’s budget. She turned to the left and continued walking, slowly, so that she could savour the sounds and smells of the market. After all, she reasoned, it wasn’t as if she had somewhere to be _right_ away. She had had a long journey, and could take her time.

Fortunately, Central Command was not a long walk, and it was an interesting one. Escha wanted to stop and look at each building to see what was inside, or to talk to every person she passed on her way and ask them about themselves. She limited herself to smiling cheerfully and greeting each person as their paths crossed. Most people blinked at her with surprise before returning the greeting. Some stared at her with suspicion, which Escha shrugged off. She thought that they must be shy, and hoped to meet them again while she was staying in Central City.

Central Command looked much more imposing when she was standing in front of it than it did from the hill. Escha was able to see how truly large it was: the sandstone edifice was several times larger than the more cozy Colseit branch, although both had three levels. The door was mere steps from where carts would pass, and Escha knew from seeing the building from the air that it was very deep.

It was an intimidating building. Escha didn’t know what to make of it, especially given that it was the head office for the government branch _she_ worked for, and she didn’t think she warranted anything as fancy as this. However, all of Central seemed to be larger and more intimidating than she was used to, so she squared her shoulders, reminded herself that she belonged here as much as anyone else, and pushed the door open.

Inside, the building looked more familiar. It was the stone, she thought. It was worked in the same way as the stone in Colseit. In front of her was a desk overladen with paperwork, to the extent that Escha thought it might buckle under the weight of the paper and undischarged responsibilities. Almost obscured entirely by the stacks of paper was a beleaguered civil servant, whose neatly pressed uniform and harried expression reminded Escha of Solle, even if this particular employee was blond and had a beard. He straightened his glasses and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

“Can I help you?” he asked pointedly. 

“Oh, yes!” Escha said, blushing. She pulled out the reports that Marion and Solle had entrusted her with. “I have some reports from Colseit. Do you know where those go?”

“I’ll take them,” the secretary said, sounding like he’d really rather do anything but take them. Given the amount of paperwork on his desk, Escha could sympathise. “I trust that everything is in order with them?”

“Naturally!” Escha said proudly. Her own report of the progress she had made in the term had only required minor amendments, and she imagined that Solle would be as exacting with his own work as he was with everyone else’s. “Here you go!”

The reports, which had looked so important and special when Escha had packed them a fortnight ago, looked like a drop in a sea of important paperwork when she placed it on the desk. She wondered how this poor person got anything done if this was what he was confronted with on a daily basis. 

“Is there anything else?” he prodded when Escha made no effort to leave immediately.

“Um … I - I’m here to see Logy — I mean Logix Fiscario.” She stumbled over his full first name; Logy hadn’t been called that for almost his entire time at Colseit, to the point where she sometimes forgot that it was his real name.

The secretary didn’t bat an eyelid at Escha’s response. “Is he expecting you?”

Escha’s heart sank at the question, because she was fairly sure Logy wouldn’t expect her to come all the way here. Still, she pressed on valiantly.

“Oh, no, I don’t think he’s _expecting_ me, but … I’m Escha. Escha Malier. I worked with him in Colseit.”

The secretary looked at his book again, and inclined his head slightly, seemingly satisfied by what he read there. “Second floor, third down the corridor,” he said.

“Thank you!” Escha chirped, heartened by the directions. Logy may not have known that she was coming to see him, but she thought he might have hoped for it. Otherwise, why would there be a note in this secretary’s diary that she was allowed to come up and see him? “I’ll go right there.”

“Mm,” the secretary said, his attention elsewhere. Escha took this as an invitation to depart.

* * *

Going up the stairs with her travelling case had been easy. Finding the right door had also been easy, because each door was labelled with the occupant’s name. It wasn’t the exertion that caused her breath to catch in her throat, or the butterflies in her stomach. Her hand rested on the door that had Logy’s nameplate bolted to it, knuckles gently brushing the wood surface of the door rather than knocking.

“Now now, Escha,” she chided herself. “This isn’t the time to get nervous.”

She steeled herself and then knocked on the door three times. The knocks echoed loudly down the corridor and Escha could feel herself blush at the sound. She really hadn’t meant to knock that loudly.

“It’s open!” she heard Logy call. Her heart skipped a beat at the sound of his voice. Escha pushed the door open.

Framed by the doorway, Logy’s atelier looked both like and utterly unlike the atelier that the two of them had shared in Colseit. Escha had fond memories of Logy using the dissembler and trainer in their shared atelier: the sharp hot smell of molten metal as alchemical properties were folded into the metal now seemed as much a part of alchemy as the sweet smell of the suspension fluid she used to mix ingredients together in her cauldron. Also familiar were the diagrams marked in chalk on the blackboards; Logy had always covered their boards at home with diagrams as he worked out new recipes or projects. The table with books piled neatly and tools arranged according to size made Escha smile, because only Logy was that much of a neat freak. She was touched to see a sprig of apple blossom in a jar on the workbench, given how far away the orchards were from Central . The natural light streaming in from the window illuminated Logy’s atelier in the same way that the light did in their shared atelier in Colseit, which was peculiarly reassuring, as was the old, beaten-up couch in the corner of the room with a half-folded blanket draped across the back.

She didn’t recognise the machine that Logy was operating. It was half again as tall as she was, with a number of levers jutting out from the front at around chest height, and a jaunty row of buttons underneath. Its immediate purpose was beyond her, but that was not uncommon with Logy’s specialist equipment. Logy hadn’t turned around as the door opened or as Escha stepped inside and closed it behind her, or when she placed her travelling case on the floor and stretched out her sore fingers. Escha wasn’t offended, as she knew that when she was caught up in a new synthesis she wasn’t paying attention to anything other than what was going on in her cauldron.

She waited a moment until he took a step back from the machine, and said, “Is this your atelier? It looks just like I imagined it would.”

Logy whirled around, his knee length coat flapping behind him as he did so. “Escha?” He sounded surprised, and a little hopeful.

“Hi, Logy,” Escha said cheerfully. She smiled nervously, threading her fingers together. Now that she was here, standing in Logy’s atelier, she wasn’t sure what to do next. Seeing Logy wearing a white shirt with a red tie and dress pants was startling, even if he had thrown a dark blue coat over it all. Excluding the trench coat, it was an outfit that would have belonged on Solle. He didn’t look like the alchemist who had fought at her side, the two of them together drawing out more alchemical power from items than they ever could have apart. He didn’t look like the friend who had muttered in disgust as they trudged through mud to their camping sites. He looked like someone who had never left the safe confines of his atelier for anything.

Then he smiled slightly and Escha thought _no, this is how he should look_. It didn’t matter what he was wearing, because that was the smile he had back in Colseit, when he was happy. Sure, he might be better dressed now than he had been when he was helping their local government as an alchemist, but now he didn’t have that distant, stiff look he’d had when he first arrived at Colseit. He looked tired, but he still looked like the Logy she knew.

“Hello, Escha,” Logy said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“You didn’t write,” Escha said, “so I came to find you after I dropped off the term reports for the branch.”

“Oh, uh…” Logy grimaced, rubbing the back of his neck. “I meant to, but I thought that’d be wasting time. I made a promise to come back to Colseit as soon as I learned everything I could here, after all.”

“Logy,” Escha sighed. “That isn’t good for you, you know? We want you back, but we want you _well_ too.”

“I know. Call it a bad habit.” Logy looked around his atelier, his expression self-deprecating. “I keep forgetting that I can prove myself _without_ running myself into the ground.”

“You can do it!” Escha said firmly. “You managed in Colseit, so I know you can do it here too.”

“Thanks, Escha,” Logy said. “Oh, where are my manners? Do you want a seat?” He gestured at the couch. “You’re not interrupting my work. I could do with a break.”

“Yes!” Escha said emphatically, keeping her satchel to hand and abandoning her suitcase. She sighed happily as she sat down on the couch, taking the weight off her feet. Despite its appearances, the couch was very comfortable, with soft cushions almost plush enough that she could sink into them. It was like sitting on a big squishy marshmallow, and she said as such to Logy.

“I … can say I never thought about it like that,” Logy said, taking up a seat next to her. With him sitting next to her, the mid-afternoon sun streaming in through the window, and the faint scent of apple blossom wafting over the heavier smells of smelting, Escha could almost believe that they were back in Colseit, and that outside of the door Marion was waiting with assignments to complete. 

“So you’ve arrived at Central. What did you think?” Logy asked. 

Escha blinked, startled out of her thoughts. “I don’t know yet,” she said. She angled herself so that she could see Logy without the sun shining in her eyes. “I only just arrived and came straight here. It’s … very big?”

“Yes, Central City has a population of around five thousand people,” Logy said. “During major festivals it can increase to almost seven thousand.”

“Seven thousand?!”

“Apparently there used to be cities with a far greater population,” Logy said. “Tens or even hundreds of thousands …” He shook his head. “I can’t even imagine it.”

“Me neither,” Escha confessed. “But five thousand is plenty big enough for me!”

“I thought it would be. I’m surprised you came. It’s a lot bigger than Colseit.”

“Well, I’m here on official business! I also have something for you.” Escha rummaged through her satchel for the bundle of letters she’d been given before she left. She had been entrusted with a number of personal letters to deliver to Logy from people in Colseit. She handed them to him in a bundle, and he took them with a bemused expression.

“What’s this?”

“Letters. It’s expensive to send things from Colseit outside of the usual mail runs, so we usually send them when we deliver reports. That’s what Marion says.”

Logy flipped through the envelopes, examining each one before putting it to the back of the pile to review the next one. “Marion … Lucille … Solle … Duke … I think this one’s from Clone … Awin … Reyfer … even Threia?” He shook his head, a corner of his mouth turning up sheepishly as he set the letters aside on his workbench, next to a jar of apple blossoms. “I really will have to start writing if Threia is remembering to write.”

“I’m here for the next week, so if you want, I can take them back with me.”

“Thanks, Escha. That’d be really useful.” He looked across at her travelling case, frowning thoughtfully. “Have you checked in anywhere yet?”

“No, not yet. I just got here and thought you could help me find a place to stay.”

“There’s a couple of places that aren’t bad, though they can be a bit pricey. Or …” Logy looked away for a moment, a frown pinching his brows, “You could stay at my place. If you would like to, that is.”

“Of course! That’d save me a lot of money! I have my stipend, of course, but staying at your place would be a huge help. Thank you, Logy!” Escha wanted to say more, but at that moment her stomach growled. She covered her face with her hands, her face hot under her palms. It didn’t help that Logy had started laughing. “I - I’m so sorry! Breakfast was _really_ early this morning and I forgot to have morning tea!”

“That doesn’t sound like you.” Logy, to Escha’s displeasure, still sounded very amused, eyes bright and doing a very bad job of repressing laughter. Escha thought that it was terribly unfair that he was especially good-looking when he laughed, if he was going to direct that laughter at her expense.

“Logy …” she complained. “Don’t tease me like that!”

Logy put up his hands in mock surrender. “All right. There’s a joint cafeteria — we share it with one of the alchemy schools. You can find it in the back of the building through the courtyard.” He withdrew a card from his pocket and handed it to Escha. Escha flipped it over a few times. It looked like a ID card, with the crest of Central’s alchemy division on the front and a series of numbers on the back that Escha recognised as Logy’s employee number. She’d seen it on enough reports over the years.

“With that,” Logy said, nodding at the card, “you should be able to get whatever you want and charge it to my account.”

“Really? Anything?”

“ _Almost_ anything,” Logy said quickly. 

“Aw.” Escha deflated. She had no idea what the local sweets were like, but she wanted to try them all out. She resolved to try only a few, maybe three, and to pay Logy back for it later. 

“Oh, could you bring me back something too? I’d come with you, but …” Logy gestured at the device he had been operating, “I’m at a delicate stage of my synthesis. I wouldn’t want to leave it unattended too long.”

“Is that what you use for synthesis?” Escha looked at it in curiosity. It didn’t look like her cauldron at all, and she couldn’t see how it was meant to work. She decided that it must be like the disassembler and the trainer; comprehensible to those trained in Central’s alchemy but utterly incomprehensible to anyone else. “What would you like?”

Logy shrugged. “A bread roll will be fine. Something I can eat with one hand. I should be finished soon …” He paused then and asked, “Did you want to go out for dinner tonight?”

She and Logy had, of course, gone out for dinner at Duke’s often enough while they were both in Colseit. This seemed like something more. She was reminded of the way he had told her that he liked her: the awkward mumbling, the anxious frown, and the tense set of his hands. She’d learned to read him in the years they had worked together in Colseit, learning to predict his actions as if they were half her own. 

“Yes!” Escha said emphatically, before he tried to withdraw his tentative offer. She had learned to seize her opportunities where she could. “But for now, a bread roll. I’ll find you the best bread roll here!” Escha levered herself out of the couch, satchel in hand, and brushed off her skirt to try and smooth over any wrinkles that might have formed. She was halfway to the door when Logy called out to her.

“Oh and … be careful.”

She turned and looked back. “Hm? Why?”

She then waited as Logy pressed his lips together, clearly thinking about how to say what he thought would be an unpalatable truth. Finally, he said, “Central … isn’t really like Colseit. People here are always aware of what family you come from and what money you have. Alchemical skill like yours … they don’t value it like they should.”

At first, Escha was not sure what he meant by this. Then, she thought that she might understand. When Logy had come to Colseit, he’d been withdrawn and cool, and it’d taken her a while to crack through his shell and draw him out. Even towards the end of his time at Colseit, Logy would downplay his alchemical skills, and Escha had not understood why at the time. 

Logy’s actions in Colseit made a lot more sense now. Central, on the other hand, made less sense. What difference did it make what family you came from, when it was who you were that was more important? Why were they so fixated on the past, when the present was more important?

And where did she fit into this structure? How would people respond to her if they more interested in her past than her present? 

“So some people might … be rude to me?” she hazarded finally. “Because I’m not from here?”

“Yeah. So be careful.”

Escha nodded emphatically. “Don’t worry! I’ll go straight to the dining hall and be back before you know it!” 

“Don’t rush back too soon,” Logy suggested. “Feel free to look around, see the sights.” He picked up one of the envelopes — Awin’s, from the grease and oil smears on the battered parchment of the envelope — and opened it. “I should be here when you come back.”

* * *

Escha had been certain that she could find the dining hall. How difficult could it be to find the most important room in this building? 

After five minutes she was ready to admit that she was completely lost. All the stone corridors were the same, each with windows that opened into a courtyard embedded at the centre of the compound, with buildings spiralling off the edges. She would have put the dining hall where the courtyard was, as that just made sense. It seemed that people in Central thought differently about the importance of food.

As she was about to give up, a bell rang overhead, making her jump. She covered her ears with her hands but the shrill, rapid buzzing cut through her attempts to muffle the sound.

Shortly after the bell had rung a lot of people around Escha’s age spilled out into the corridor, buffeting Escha along with them. She quickly stepped into a shallow recession along the corridor, and let the people pass her by. They all were wearing similar clothes: plaid skirts or shorts, white blouses, and black knee socks and shoes. A uniform, perhaps? The civil service had a uniform, though Escha never wore it, so maybe Central expected their student alchemists to wear a uniform too? It made sense, Escha had to admit, even if she wasn’t sure she would have liked to wear one.

A short girl with long blonde hair was staring at Escha with poorly disguised interest, and making no attempt to move along with the rest of her cohort towards their destinations. She was wearing the same uniform as the rest of the girls her age, but was alone, arms folded against her chest like a shield. Her expression went blank when she realised Escha was aware of her regard, but there was something about the way she held her head that suggested that she was still intrigued. Escha took this as a good sign and bounded over to her once the crush of people eased.

The girl blinked in visible surprise as she realised that Escha was heading towards her. Escha waved and smiled cheerfully.

“Hello!” Escha said. “I’m new here and I’m pretty sure I’m lost. Could I ask you for directions?”

“Where would you like to go?” The girl’s voice was soft but not hesitant. Wary, Escha thought, but hopefully not of her. She hadn’t done anything to warrant someone being afraid of her, or at least nothing that she knew of.

“I’m looking for the cafeteria …” Escha turned on her heel slowly, gesturing around her. “I thought it would be somewhere around here…”

“It is. It’s across the courtyard and in that large building over there.” The girl pointed at a building to the left of them through a nearby window. “Do you see?”

“Yes! Are you going there as well?”

“…I was.” The girl — and Escha realised with a flush of shame that she hadn’t introduced herself — didn’t sound particularly enthused with the prospect of going to the cafeteria. Perhaps she didn’t have friends to go there with her. Logy had said that people could be mean to others here, and had been lonely himself before he had come to Colseit. Perhaps this girl was the same.

Well, Escha told herself, that was easily fixed. “Let’s go together!” she said. She beamed. “My name’s Escha. Escha Malier. I’m from Colseit which is near the Undiscovered Ruins. Oh, but they’re more the _fallen_ ruins now … Anyway, it’s nice to meet you!”

“I’m Miruca,” Miruca said. “I’m from Stellard.” Miruca didn’t return Escha’s smile. Her expression looked more fitting on someone like Solle than a girl younger than Escha, bottom lip pressed thin and into her mouth.

“Hm? Do I have something on my face?”

“No…” Miruca said slowly. “It’s just that you remind me a little of someone I know.” There was a flicker of vulnerability in her voice, ruthlessly quashed by the time she finished speaking. 

“I do?” Escha felt momentarily guilty about reminding Miruca of someone she knew, given that Stellard was likely very far away. Curiosity got the better of her though, and she asked, “What’s their name?”

“Shallotte, or Shal. She’s a traditional alchemist back home.” Miruca smiled slightly as she spoke a subtle upturn of the corners of her mouth that if Escha hadn’t been looking for it, she might not have noticed. She took that as a positive sign, even before Miruca’s words registered.

“Really? That’s _amazing_!” Escha learned forward, her hands clasping together in delight at finding another alchemist just like her. “I’m a traditional alchemist too!”

“You are? Then … why are you here?” Miruca shook her head in clear bafflement. “I wouldn’t have thought that Central had anything to offer a traditional alchemist.”

“Oh, no, I’m not studying here,” Escha said quickly, waving her hands. “I’m here seeing a friend! He was taught to use alchemy here just like you. He went out to Colseit and we worked together for four years. Then he came back here and I’m here to visit.” 

“I see. Was it a long way?”

“It was! But I like traveling! Oh, listen to me, rambling on like this.”

“I don’t mind.” In fact, Miruca sounded faintly amused. “Have you seen much of Central yet?”

“Not really! I saw the market on my way here, and I’d love to have a closer look at it …”

Miruca looked at her speculatively. Sometime during their conversation the tight, closed tension that wound her to hunch her shoulders and fold her arms as a form of armour had loosened. Escha wasn’t sure when that had happened, but Miruca seemed brighter now. Perhaps it was just meeting someone from far away, who didn’t grow up in Central. That said, Escha was surprised when Miruca offered, with poorly affected disinterest, “Did you want to look at it?”

“I’d love that! Thank you! Let’s go right now!” Escha grabbed Miruca’s hands in her own in an impulsive gesture. It was one of those gestures that happened without Escha choosing to do it, usually to friends. 

Miruca looked startled, but didn’t pull away. “I didn’t say I was going to take you.” Escha froze as she realised that Miruca had just asked if Escha wanted to look at the market.

“O-oh! I - I’m sorry!” Escha let go of Miruca’s hands, utterly mortified.

Miruca’s faint smile widened to something sardonic. “I don't mind, I’ve got a free afternoon. Didn’t you want to go to the cafeteria though …?”

“Oh, no, I can buy what I need at the market instead. I’m sure of it!” Escha looked around. “Now, how do we get out of here?”

“This way,” Miruca said, and with unconscious ease guided the two of them out of the compound and into the street. Escha sighed. She had been turning herself around in circles this whole time.

“This place is really confusing,” she complained, shoulders sagging in defeat.

“You get used to it,” Miruca said. She looked behind Escha and frowned in puzzlement. “Why does your tail move?”

“My tail?” Escha craned her head to look at her fluffy tail accessory as it swished rhythmically from side to side. “I don’t know why, exactly. My mother made it with alchemy when I was a little girl, and she never wrote down the recipe.”

“It does look like something you’d give a child.”

“Hehe, I know, I’m getting a bit too old to wear it,” Escha said easily. She was in no hurry to retire it any time soon, and besides she thought it was cute. It was the prerogative of girls everywhere to wear things that made them feel cute. She caught the tail and petted the silky texture with her fingers before letting it go. “Would you like to touch it?” she offered to Miruca.

“No, that would be weird,” Miruca said bluntly. It was the most honest thing Escha had seen out of her yet. They definitely were going to be friends, Escha was sure of it!

“Okay, but you’re missing out,” Escha said. “It’s really soft and fluffy!”

“The market’s this way,” Miruca said abruptly, turning and starting to walk away.

“Wait for me!” Escha protested, running after her. She caught up quickly.

The walk to the market was longer than it had been last time, because there were more people. Escha wasn’t sure why there were more people out on the streets now, but she greeted each one that they passed. Most walked by without giving any sign of hearing Escha’s greeting. Some grunted, or looked at them briefly before dismissing them from view. None returned Escha’s greeting.

“They won’t say hello back,” Miruca said after the tenth person they passed. “They never do.”

“They don’t have to,” Escha said. “But this way they know that someone was happy to see them.”

Miruca said nothing to this. Escha continued to say greet everyone with a cheery ‘hello’ and a smile. It slowed them down, but they had a free afternoon. Besides, Escha couldn’t walk past people without saying hello. It would just be wrong! 

Escha could hear the market before she saw it; a bright hubbub of noise that bubbled down the street like a boiling pot. The smells came next: old dust, animal musk, people, and over the top of that the smell of cooking meat. She quickened her steps to get there faster, Miruca trailing in her wake.

“First, food,” Escha promised herself. “We can’t go shopping on an empty stomach!” 

Once she saw a vendor selling meat on a skewer, Escha immediately bought two and gave one to a bemused Miruca. “We have to keep our strength up!” Escha said.

She set about working her way through the market with a will, bouncing from one stall to another and browsing everything they had to offer. One stall had sandstone, another a form of candy made from syrup distilled from trees, and another plant cuttings from places Escha had never heard of. She bought all of these, as well as some paper and notebooks, as she was of the view that she could never have too much paper. 

“Oh, they’re selling apples!” Escha announced as she looked across at the stalls on the other side of the street. “I wonder if they’re from our orchards.”

“You grow apples?”

“Yes! Colseit has lots of orchards, and my family run the biggest one.” Escha remembered Logy’s fascination at Colseit’s apples when he first arrived. “Have you had an apple before?”

“No.”

“You definitely should try one once.” Escha cut her way through the crowd, apologising rapidly to anyone she might have hit with her bag, and made her way to the apple stall. The apples looked over-ripe to Escha’s practiced eye, but would still taste good.

“Excuse me, but how much is one apple?” she asked the store owner. She anticipated around fifty to one hundred cole, given how far the apples would have had to travel and how old they would be now.

“Four thousand cole,” the store owner said, and Escha choked. She had had no idea that apples were so expensive when you left Colseit. Logy’s apple blossom took on a new significance now.

“That’s pretty normal,” Miruca offered.

“I - I guess that makes sense.” She managed a smile. “Thank you, but I don’t think I can buy one.”

“No problem,” the vendor said, turning his attention elsewhere. 

“It’s like that with things from Stellard too,” Miruca noted. “It’s because everything’s so far away. It makes it rare.”

“So you can’t buy food from home?” That sounded so sad. Escha was already missing apple tarts, and she had only been away for a few weeks. She couldn’t imagine being unable to to taste the food she was familiar with for months. 

“No.” Miruca didn’t sound as despondent as Escha would have in her circumstances, but Escha thought that had more to do with Miruca being less emotionally open than Escha too.

She moved them quickly to the next stall, which seemed to sell spices that Escha had never heard of. She bought some cinnamon, quietly surprised at how much cheaper it was here than at Colseit. 

By the time that they had reached the book seller three stalls down, Miruca’s mood had lifted. Escha flipped through a tattered book, lips moving soundlessly as she translated the text inside.

“I think I can use this,” she announced to Miruca. “Or maybe Logy can.”

“Your friend?” Miruca asked. She craned her head to read the page Escha had been translating. “I thought you said he was trained at Central. This doesn’t look like anything we’re taught.”

“It isn’t?”

Miruca shook her head. 

_Huh,_ Escha thought. She knew she had learned a lot from Logy in his time at Colseit. He had told her that he had learned a lot from her too, but she hadn’t really believed it until now. They really were a complementary partnership, she thought.

By the time Escha and Miruca had covered the length of the market and back again, it was mid-afternoon and Escha’s hands were full of cloth bags full of items that she thought she could use in alchemy or, at the very least, show the people at home to prove what strange and wonderful things you could buy at Central City. Her energy was flagging, and Miruca was even less talkative. It was time to call it a day, she thought, and go see how Logy was doing with his synthesis. She remembered vaguely that she was meant to have done something, but try as she might, she simply couldn’t remember it. She dismissed it from her mind on the walk back from the market, assuming that whatever it was, if it was important Logy would remind her of it.

At the entrance of Central Command, Escha turned to Miruca, putting her bags down on the ground to stretch her hands out. “It was wonderful going shopping with you!” Escha said. “How long will you be studying in Central?”

“A year.” Miruca sounded gloomy at the prospect. Escha thought she might understand that; it was hard being away from her home as long as she had, and Escha would be heading back to Colseit soon. Spending a year away, without your close friends, would make Escha gloomy too. However, she thought she had a solution.

“I can write to you!”

“Really?”

“Yes! I’d love to write to you. I can address the letters to Central Command and they’d find you, right?

“Right.” She hesitated. “I’d like that.” Then she looked at the position of the sun in the sky. “I have homework to do.”

Escha was used to Miruca’s abrupt changes of conversation and didn’t take offence.

“You should do it,” Escha said earnestly, acutely aware of her responsibility as the more senior alchemist of the duo. “It’s the only way to better yourself as an alchemist, and also help out the people of Stellard.”

Miruca stared at her for a moment, before saying warily, “I never told you I’d be going back.”

“You didn’t have to,” Escha said earnestly. “You’re like Logy and me; you do alchemy to help people, and Stellard is your home. Of course you’re going to go back there one day! Hopefully one day I’ll go to Stellard too, and see you there!”

This had the cheering effect she wanted. Miruca smiled slightly. “…Okay. I’ll see you then.” She turned away and headed inside. Escha picked up her bags, juggling them in her hands until she felt she had a comfortable grip on them all, and then headed inside herself.

* * *

The door to Logy’s atelier was closed but not locked. Escha turned the door handle with her elbow and pushed it open with her foot, hoping that she wouldn’t drop any of her bags onto the floor. She was fairly sure that nothing would break, but her dropping her bags would be very loud and likely draw the attention of the rest of the people on the floor. The whole building was tensely quiet, as if holding its breath or looking over its shoulder for something lurking out of sight. It wasn’t a very comfortable feeling, and Escha didn’t want to make things worse by startling the other people on the floor.

The tense silence was worlds away from Colseit’s branch office’s lively enthusiasm, that was for sure. She slipped inside the door and pushed it closed with her foot. At least here, with the apple blossoms wafting over Logy’s alchemical experiments, she felt more at home. She closed her eyes briefly, exhaling in relief. 

There was no comment from Logy about her return, which Escha found surprising. She opened her eyes, blinking them briefly against the sunlight from the window, and then had to smile in fond exasperation when she saw what he was doing. Logy was sprawled diagonally across his sofa, back wedged into the corner and legs outstretched in front of him, fast asleep. The late-afternoon sun spilled in from the window and pooled around the couch and its immediate surrounds. Escha was reminded of stories about cats sleeping in patches of sunlight and tried to stifle a giggle behind her hand. She wasn’t successful.

He didn’t stir at the sound of her laughter, or the dull thumps as she placed her bags on the workbench he had in the middle of his atelier. He didn’t stir at all until she forced her way onto the couch, fitting into the gaps he’d left and causing the stuffing to flop up and down with his movements. He protested sleepily, scrubbing at his face, before squinting at her in confusion.

“Oops?” Escha offered, feeling her face grow hot. “Sorry, Logy.”

“Hello, Escha…?” Logy said, voice rough. He swallowed, then extended his arms above his head, stretching out the kinks in his back. “I really need to stop doing this,” he muttered to himself.

“You really do,” Escha said earnestly. “That must have been really uncomfortable.” 

Logy sat upright, squirming into position against the couch that seemed intent on encouraging people who sat on it to sprawl into its soft stuffing. Escha was barely resisting the temptation to curl up into it and have a nap. Logy scrubbed at his face again, before running his hand through his hair and sending it into disarray. Now that he was all rumpled, Logy looked like the alchemist Escha had known back in Colseit.

“I suppose I’ll pay for sleeping on the couch later, when I’m old and grey,” he commented ruefully, smiling crookedly under her gaze.

“You’re already halfway there,” Escha said, nodding at his hair.

“It’s always been like that,” Logy pointed out, but conceded the point with a nod. “So what did you do today? It looks like you went shopping.”

“Oh, I did!” Escha said. “I went to the market with an alchemy student.”

“You did?” Logy raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Yes! She’s from a place called Stellard. I’m not sure where it is though, and I don’t think we ever travelled there. Have you heard of it?”

Logy nodded, which didn’t surprise Escha. Logy knew a lot of random pieces of information. She supposed it must have been part of his education in Central. “It’s the city oasis near the Dusk Sea. I’ve heard about it, but never travelled there.”

“Really?” Escha was suitably impressed, both at his ability to remember geographic factoids, and how far Miruca would have travelled to come to school here. “That’s a long way to go for school.”

“There’s a lot of alchemists from small frontier towns that come here to learn our style of alchemy. It’s rare to learn alchemy like you did.”

“Yeah,” Escha agreed. “I was lucky I could learn it from my mom.”

“It does sound like a more — _you_ way to learn things.”

“Hehe,” Escha giggled. “I suppose so.”

However, her mirth quickly died away. It seemed sad to her that Miruca had travelled all this way to study alchemy, one of Escha’s most beloved things in the world, only to be closed off and sad about it all. No, Escha corrected herself. It wasn’t that Miruca was sad. It was that she was wary. Miruca reminded her a little of Logy when he had come to Colseit. Not completely; Logy had been profoundly unhappy and hurt, while Miruca seemed more apprehensive than unhappy. But there was something in both of them that had yearned for someone to understand them. Like Flameau had. 

Things would be so much simpler if everyone could just be friends with each other.

“What is it, Escha?” Logy said, breaking her out of her thoughts.

Escha hummed, trying to find a way to put her thoughts into words. What she came up with wasn’t quite right, but she thought it would do. “What I really noticed was that Miruca looked so _lonely_. Like Flameau. And you, when you first came to Colseit.”

“Hm?” Logy frowned thoughtfully. “I suppose that makes sense. Especially if she’s from a place as small as Stellard. I remember what it was like being a student here. It was lonely for me, and I had lived in Central all my life.”

“Oh,” Escha said. “Maybe I should have invited her to dinner after all …”

“Uh, maybe not,” Logy said. “I was looking forward to it being just us.”

“Me too,” Escha said quickly. “I was just thinking aloud about how sad it must be to eat alone all the time. Maybe I should go find her and eat lunch with her tomorrow.”

“Let me know if you decide to do it. I might join you?”

“Really?”

“Sure.” Logy shrugged. “You’ll have to go back to Colseit eventually. Maybe I can help her find some friends after you’ve headed home.”

“That’s a great idea!” Escha clapped her hands together in delight. “I’m sure that with you helping her, she’ll definitely find friends.”

“We’ll see how it goes,” Logy said ruefully. “I haven’t been all that successful so far.”

“You’ll be fine! You were a good senior to Lucille, weren’t you?”

“After a fashion.” Logy looked away, towards his workbench. Escha followed his gaze and blushed. She had bought a lot more than she thought.

“What did you buy…?” Logy wondered.

“Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that,” Escha said. “Mostly stuff for alchemy —oh, that reminds me! What do you use sandstone for in alchemy?”

“Sandstone?” Logy echoed. “Hm. It’s not something I’ve done a lot of work with but I do remember reading something about it …” He prised himself from the soft, comforting embrace of the couch and walked over to his bookcase. He stood there for a moment, studying the bookcase, before pulling out several books. He put them on the workbench, careful of Escha’s shopping, and started thumbing through them.

“Here,” he said finally, not looking up from the books. “There’s a number of applications for sandstone. It might need to be reinforced before you use it — that we can do here, it won’t take very long. I can give you a list of suggestions later, if you like.”

Escha’s stomach growled, reminding her that lunch time had been several hours ago and dinner was far closer. “Logy…” she interrupted.

“Huh,” Logy muttered. “That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of trying that. I wonder what would happen if it was synthesised to liquid metal …”

“ _Logy_ …” Escha tried again.

Logy didn’t look up, attention entirely caught up in whatever he was reading.

“Logy!” Escha called. Logy’s head snapped up. He blinked, startled, and then blushed. 

“Uh, sorry, Escha,” he offered.

“Let’s take the books with us,” she proposed. “We can look at them at dinner.”

“Sure,” Logy said. He marked each section with a scrap of paper before closing each book, stacking them into a pile and tucking them under one arm. “We’ll leave your alchemical ingredients here, all right? It’ll be easier for tomorrow, if you want me to do anything to them before you go.” He looked around the room. “Did you want me to carry your travelling case?”

“It is pretty heavy, and you are carrying the books as well…”

“I can manage.”

Escha wasn’t so sure. Her travelling case was heavy, and some of those books looked very valuable. She didn’t want them to be dropped on the ground and damaged —that would be terrible. Logy seemed determined to carry something, however.

“How about I take the books, then?”

“Sure, okay.”

Logy held still as she took the books from his arms, handling them with exquisite care. After all, they were books about alchemy that she had never seen before! She looked forward to finding out what was in them.

Once the books were safely in her arms, Logy picked up Escha’s travelling case from where she had left it earlier that day. “Shall we head out?”

* * *

One thing that was consistent between Central and Colseit was that dormitories were available for its civil servants to live in, if they so chose. The dormitory building here was much larger than Colseit’s but also seemed have a lot of shops and offices inside. It was like a little village! Escha wanted to explore the shops, and promised herself that she would do that tomorrow.

Logy insisted that Escha wait outside while he tidied his dormitory room quickly, which intrigued Escha. The Logy she had known was such a neat freak that the idea of his apartment being messy enough to _need_ tidying up was a surprise. She wondered what, if anything, was so untidy that she couldn’t see it. 

She suspected it was something like him leaving in the morning with a mug in the sink waiting to be washed that evening. Escha really didn’t know why he was so concerned about that; after all, he had known her for years and she was far more untidy than he was.

Escha sat down on the floor near Logy’s door and flipped through one of the books. It seemed to be a book about the innate properties of various stones and ores, fortunately complete with pictures and diagrams as well as text. She turned to the section on iron, a metal that she was familiar with in her own alchemy, and compared what she knew with the properties identified in the book. She was struck by the differences between what she thought was important and what the book thought was important. It had passages on the tensile strength of iron, its innate properties, and its unique attributes, whereas Escha would have thought that listing what it could be synthesised with would be enough. In the margins were handwritten notes about possible synthesis experiments. The handwriting looked familiar, and Escha couldn’t help but smile when she realised that it was Logy’s, albeit from when he was much younger. 

She was leafing through the section on granite when Logy opened the door. He’d changed out of his work clothes at some point, and was now wearing a shirt and trousers under his blue trench coat that were more like what he had worn in Colseit, though in brighter colours. He should wear red more often, she thought. It suited him. Logy looked around, before looking down. “Ah, there you are,” he said. “Sorry about that. It was a lot messier than I thought it was.”

“Really?” Escha said dubiously. She stood up and dusted off her skirt and tail accessory, before picking the books up and tucking them under her arm once more. “I’m pretty sure, because it’s you, it would have been super clean.”

“Uh … well it’s been a while since I was really home, so I didn’t know _what_ state it was in…” Logy said awkwardly. “It looks all right though.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Escha said. “I’m looking forward to seeing your home!”

“It’s not that interesting,” Logy demurred.

“Oh, but it is! I wonder what kinds of things you have in there?”

In answer, Logy opened the door so that she could see. It was not what she was imagining. It was a very spartan room: a bed, a table and chair, a clothes rack, a sleeping roll spread out on the floor, and a sink and hotplate. If it wasn’t for Logy’s alchemical sword put away on a stand and the books stacked neatly on the table, Escha would have never known he lived there. His atelier had more of Logy in it than his home. Escha took a step backward in surprise.

“Most of my things are in boxes back home,” Logy said in way of explanation. “Solle’s looking after them for me.”

Home, it seemed, was Colseit.

“I didn’t know you and Solle were close,” Escha said, surprised. Though, now that she thought about it, it made sense. Solle and Logy both liked things to be correct and in their rightful places, so they had that in common at least.

“He’s all right once you get to know him,” Logy said. “I can take some of those books if you like.”

“Thank you!” Escha chirped, and held still while Logy extracted half the books from her arms. She readjusted her grip on the remaining three books until she was satisfied that she wouldn’t drop them. Logy did the same thing.

“Well, then,” Logy said. “Let’s head out.”

The two of them went out into the street, blinking against the fading light of day. Escha craned her head back to look at the sunset. She’d always liked to look at sunsets. Their land may have been dying over the last hundred years, but there was still beauty to be found in that dying. Sunsets were brilliant no matter where she was, setting the sky afire from the burned orange and reds of the horizon to the dusky purple overhead. Here, the fading sunlight settled on the buildings and imbuing them with a warm, comforting light.

“It’s nice,” she said, turning to Logy. “The sunset, that is.”

“I haven’t really looked,” Logy replied.

“You should!” Escha urged. “Try to do it at least once a week.”

“All right,” Logy said. Escha wasn’t sure if he was humouring her or not. “I’ll do my best.”

Logy guided them to a bar that reminded Escha of Duke’s back in Colseit. While from the outside it didn’t look much like Duke’s bar at all, as the building was much larger than Duke’s, it was as lively and noisy as Duke’s ever was. As she looked inside, even the clientele seemed familiar, wearing the uniform of the civil service, talking animatedly with colleagues with drinks in hand, and predominantly male. Escha wondered whether the owner of this restaurant bemoaned the lack of women coming to his store like Duke did. Maybe there would be pancakes and whipped cream here too?

“It’s _perfect_ ,” she said, clasping her hands together and turning to Logy to beam at him.

They took a seat at a table in a back corner, well placed in relation to the overhead lights. Escha wiped the table down with a napkin before putting Logy’s books down gently on the wooden surface. Logy placed his down less gently next to them, before reaching into one of the pockets of his jacket. He extracted a familiar, well-used notebook and pencil. He flipped through the notebook, and laid the notebook flat on the table at a fresh page.

Escha reached into her satchel for a notebook and pencil of her own to note down the recipes that Logy came up with, only for her fingers to brush up against a hard unfamiliar object. She plucked it out and stared at it. “Oh!” she exclaimed, staring down at Logy’s ID in mortification. “I forgot to get you your bread roll!”

Logy laughed, shaking his head. “It’s fine. I can’t say that I remembered it either.”

“Ohhhh, and I was going to get you the best bread roll they had too…” Escha moaned, slumping forward. “I’m sorry! I just got distracted with everything.”

“It’s okay. We’re here now.”

“Still…” Escha sighed. “You trusted me and I forgot.”

“It’s really not that big a deal,” Logy said.

“W-well, you better eat up now!” Escha said sternly. “You can’t go skipping meals all the time. That’s not good for you!”

“I know.” Logy sounded bemused. “I don’t make a habit of doing it regularly.”

Escha slid the menu board to him. “You have to pick two things on here: dinner and a dessert.”

“Okay,” Logy said, clearly repressing laughter. “Though, you know that I’ve been here before, right? I know what’s on the menu.”

Escha pulled the menu board back and studied it. There wasn’t much to study, and the prices were completely different with what she had come to expect. _Just like the market,_ she thought to herself.

The soup looked good, even if she wasn’t quite sure what half the ingredients were in it, and she had never heard of a steak and kidney pie being cooked badly before. She was pretty sure she had enough money for both, too. Dessert was easy. Though it was a shame that apple pie wasn’t an option, a cherry pie with whipped cream would do nicely. 

“Hm, how about these for me?” she said, pointing them out on the menu. 

“Got it,” Logy said, standing up and turning to go. “I’ll go order for us now.”

Escha nodded, opening one of the books and flicking through the pages. It was about calculating the tensile strength of various alchemical ingredients, which Escha would admit she was not interested in. She thought she might understand the graphs a little, but it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense otherwise. She thought it was far better to feel an item in your hands and get a sense of what it would do that way.

“That’s dry reading for you,” Logy said on his return. Escha looked up from the book and smiled sheepishly.

“I’m not really _reading_ it,” she clarified. “I know this all makes sense to you, but to me it’s just a bunch of numbers.”

“Your method of alchemy doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either,” Logy replied. “I still have no idea how you can be so confident about what will happen when you synthesise things without doing the calculations.”

He flipped open the book that Escha had been reading while she waited for him to come out of his dormitory room, humming tunelessly as he read before making a series of numerical notations in his notebook. He looked up at Escha, frowning thoughtfully. “Hey, Escha. If you were to synthesise a fire stone with slate, what would happen?”

“I suppose that depends on what the third or fourth ingredients were,” Escha said. “If I wanted it to explode, I’d put an ignition source in. But if I wanted it to hold heat for a long time, I’d want to use muddy water as well, I think.”

“Why muddy water?”

“The water and dirt would keep it from getting too hot,” Escha said. 

Logy nodded and made a series of calculations. “Maybe two pieces, then,” he said, mostly to himself.

Escha waited for an explanation. It wasn’t forthcoming. “Logy,” she probed finally. “What’s this about?”

“Oh.” Logy laughed ruefully. “Just something I was thinking about for our branch’s next airship. I was thinking some kind of tile to cover the floor with so that we can sleep in it if we have to.”

“Our … next airship?” Escha echoed. After Central had claimed their dreadnaught, the Colseit R & D Division had been limited as to how far they could stretch the supplies they could carry with them. It was frustrating to know that there were alchemical ingredients _just_ out of reach, given that Escha knew what she could do now if she had the right supplies.

“Didn’t Awin tell you?” Logy asked, nonplussed. “He’s got his hands on another recommissioned blimp and wants to fix it up.”

“No!” Escha exclaimed. She knew that Awin was trying to keep some kind of project secret, but she had assumed that it was his constant tinkering around Colseit. She certainly hadn’t envisaged it was another airship project. But she also knew that Awin was prone to taking on projects that weren’t feasible or even possible, and so she added tentatively, “Is it fixable?”

Logy nodded, to her delighted surprise. “I think so,” he said. “Based on the blueprints he sent me, that is. There’s some things I’d change for efficiency, but the general idea looks sound.”

“Wow,” Escha breathed. She clapped her hands together in glee. “Wow! We’re going to get our own airship again!”

“Assuming Central doesn’t take it off us,” Logy muttered, frowning sourly.

Escha shook her head. “That’s not going to happen this time. The dreadnaught we made was so amazing and new, but we don’t need something _that_ amazing now that the Unexplored Ruins are … well, explored.”

“That’s true,” Logy conceded. “Anyway, it’s still only in the design stage. Awin wants to start construction but I think we need to do more tests first.”

“Good luck getting Brother listening to that …” Escha sighed.

“I hope he does,” Logy said. “Things can go very wrong with airships.” He crossed his arm across his chest, holding the elbow where he’d been burned. It was a nervous tic he had when he was talking, even obliquely, about the dreadnaught accident he’d been involved in before.

“I’m sure he’ll be careful,” Escha said optimistically. Honesty made her add, “…probably. But we can’t do anything about it _here_ , so we might as well worry about it when he starts building it and not before.”

“You’re right,” Logy agreed. “About your sandstone question, could you look up its alchemical coefficient? It should be in the book you have under your elbow there.”

“Right!” Escha started flipping through the book for the section on sandstone. On finding the page, she scanned it quickly, looking for something that looked like an alchemical coefficient. “Seventeen…?” she said dubiously. 

“That sounds about right.” Logy seemed to know what that meant, even if Escha didn’t. “How about the coefficient for distilled water…?”

Escha was in the process of looking up the coefficient for various types of ceramics when two plates and a bowl were laid before them. Her head snapped up, attention ensnared by the delicious smell wafting from the plates, and met the gaze of the server who nodded before tucking her hair behind her ear.

“Dessert’s still comin’ but this’ll tide you over,” she said.

“Thank you!” Escha said fervently. She dipped her spoon into the soup and swirled it before spooning it into her mouth. It was more of a salty beef broth than a soup, and Escha hummed in appreciation of the taste. Getting the soup and the pie had been a _very_ good choice. She used her fork to break the flaky golden crust on her steak and kidney pie before scooping up a forkful and trying that too. It was piping hot, but it tasted a lot like one of the pies she could get from Duke’s on the days that the trade shipment came in from the depot. 

She stopped when she realised that Logy had made no movement toward his own meal. She looked over at him, scribbling away in his notebook, flipping through his books, and shook her head in fond exasperation. “Logy,” she said insistently, and again when he didn’t look up. “You can work on that later. Remember, you didn’t eat lunch!”

Logy looked up blankly for a moment before he took in the sight of the two pies and Escha’s bowl of soup. “Oh, right,” he said. “Dinner.”

“ _And_ dessert,” Escha said. “It’ll come along later, so eat up!”

Escha then set about eating her meal with a will. Just as she had finished her steak and kidney pie, another two plates arrived, each bearing cherry pie with whipped cream. Logy slid the whipped cream from his plate to Escha’s with his spoon. Escha smiled in appreciation around her food. She refrained from eating Logy’s too, even though he did offer. She had been serious about his needing to eat dessert. He couldn’t skip lunch _and_ dessert, that would just be terrible.

By the time they had finished, true night had settled over Central, with a change of clientele at the bar as well. When Escha and Logy had arrived, it had been lively but restrained. As they had eaten, the quieter patrons had left, to be replaced by more raucous eaters and drinkers. Duke’s got like that as well, and Escha had learned to leave a couple of hours into the evening before the singing started. Mister Duke was, in Escha’s experience, a painfully off-key singer, despite his enthusiasm. 

“We should probably head back,” Logy said, collecting up the books and tucking them under his arm.

“It’s noisier than I was expecting! Is there a holiday tomorrow?”

“I don’t think so.” He shrugged. “I think it’s just that there’s more people here than in Duke’s.”

“There’s a lot more people here _period_ ,” Escha observed as they made their way out. “It was nice though!” She frowned at Logy. “Though you made me go a long way just to have dinner with you.”

“Don’t worry,” Logy said. He glanced at her, then away. He cleared his throat and put his hands into his pockets. “Next time, I’ll come home for our date.”

Escha stopped. She had been careful not to call this a date, even in the privacy of her own thoughts, because she hadn’t want to presume too much.

“Next time?” she asked.

Logy looked stricken. “I mean — that is, if there _is_ a next time…?”

Escha sighed in relief. “That’s what I thought you said. I’d like there to be a next time? I’m pretty new at this kind of thing.” She laughed. “It’s not like there were a lot of people to date in Colseit!”

“It’s not really something I uh, spent a lot of time doing either.” Escha took some solace from the fact that Logy was blushing as hard as she felt she was.

“Oh? Why not? There’s lots of people here!”

Logy shrugged. “I just never really had the time, and I didn’t really know anyone here.”

“Well, you know me. Tomorrow you’ll know Miruca. And I can find you more friends tomorrow if you want!”

“Ah, I think I’ll pass,” Logy said quickly. “I’m going to be going home eventually, aren’t I?”

_Home._ It made her stomach flop over when he called Colseit home, when he made it clear that his stay in Central City was temporary, and that he would soon come back. Visiting Central was enlightening to understand Logy’s thought processes. She thought she understood why Logy considered Colseit home. Central may have been where he was raised, but it didn’t feel like a place to live. It felt like a place to sleep and work. There was something quietly tragic about Logy’s room reflecting Central City as a whole, and Escha didn’t think that would be good for him. She hadn’t spent those years helping him out of his shell to have her work undone!

She vowed to leave something of hers in Logy’s room when she left, so that he would have something from home there. And maybe she could find something from Stellard when the supply runs next arrived at Colseit, so she could send something to Miruca.

“I enjoyed tonight,” she said to the night sky. She turned her head to Logy, who was looking at her with a quizzical frown on his face. “Let’s go back to your home, okay? It’s a week until the next supply run, so we’ll have plenty of time to talk about alchemy. And … us.” She felt very daring saying that, given that they had only just had their first date, but one of them had to be confident. It might as well be her. She had a week here, and she was determined to seize her opportunity.

“I suppose it is a long time before I’m going back to Colseit,” Logy conceded. He smiled shyly, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I can make breakfast tomorrow morning. We can start talking then. You uh, don’t have any allergies, right?”

“Nope!” Escha chirped. She didn’t point out that Logy knew she didn’t have any allergies. “And I can cook dinner for us tomorrow. I saw some things at the market I’d like to try out. It’ll be fun!” She wasn’t sure what she could achieve on his hotplate, but she was definitely willing to give it a go. She wouldn’t be Escha Malier if she backed down from a challenge like this!

“I’d like that.” He took her hand in his. It felt right holding his hand, like his hand perfectly complemented hers. Escha still felt nervous about what their future together might hold, but she was happy to take it as it came. Right now, she had everything she needed from him.


End file.
